


Cornerstone

by fathomfive



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Datekougyou | Date Tech, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 16:27:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20100163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fathomfive/pseuds/fathomfive
Summary: The Iron Wall is a joint construction, where everybody has their role to play.  Moniwa finds, maybe a little too late, that he's been taking his own role for granted.Because, here’s the thing. He’s kept his place by being cautious, but Aone is not cautious. Futakuchi is not cautious. Kamasaki and Sasaya, for some damned inexplicable reason, have in this last year become willing to throw caution to the winds when he readies his set—he’s watched. He knows they’ve been jumping higher for his toss. All of them have been reaching for the place where what they’ve built meets the sky.





	Cornerstone

The new kid isn’t saying anything. Moniwa Kaname, second-year reserve setter, wonders if it’s his fault. All he did was ask how whatshisname—Aone—is settling in at school. Maybe he hit a nerve. Maybe he came off as rude? Maybe Aone just couldn’t hear him from all the way up there.

“Oi, upperclassman asked you a question, big guy,” says one of the other first years. Futakuchi is the glib one. Looking at his face makes Moniwa want to hold a finger to his lips and go _shhh_! very loudly.

Aone starts a little and looks down at Moniwa, who offers him a limp wave.

“Uh, hey,” he says again. “Just wondering how you like things so far. At school, I mean. I mean. Of course we’re all here to help out on the court, but if there’s anything else you need or you’re not sure about…” He’s rambling. He makes a few distracted hand motions and shuts up.

Aone looms over him, expression unreadable. Futakuchi does this thing where he pretends like he’s hiding a grin behind his hand but the whole gesture is just meant to make the grin more obvious. Moniwa’s not sure he likes Futakuchi.

Aone’s face is still about as telling as a slab of concrete. He ducks his head in acknowledgement, and the part of Moniwa that isn’t still guessing at his height, reaction time, endurance—the non-setter part of him—notices that Aone’s ears are red.

Oh, great. Did he embarrass the new kid? Does he sound like he’s just fishing for respect? He casts about for something else to say, something innocuous and calming.

“Thanks,” Aone says. “Can you give me directions to the electrical engineering classroom? I tried to ask someone this morning. She ran.”

Even Futakuchi can’t dredge up a reaction to that one.

“Oh—sure,” Moniwa says, his brain feeling like a hamster wheel after the hamster’s jumped off. Maybe he should start going to bed earlier. “You can go by the middle stair, but there’s actually a shorter way, you have to cut left right after Lab Three and then you…”

The other first-years gather to listen as he talks. He hasn’t gotten all their names straight yet—there’s the one with the hair, and Futakuchi, and the one without hair—they all look like decent guys. Even Aone.

_You don’t need decent_, says a traitorous part of his brain that speaks up every so often. It sounds a lot like last year’s captain, except when it sounds like Coach. Or that guy who always heckles the team from the stands. _You need blockers._

One year on, and Moniwa’s still not sure how he feels about the words “Iron Wall.” He didn’t know last year’s graduating class very well but he has some idea that “iron” didn’t do right by them. It’s a lot to live up to, maybe too much. After all, you either have a wall or a ruin.

By the end of practice, though, he knows that Datekou has at least one born blocker. It’s hard to tell what Aone’s thinking about at any given time, but a lot of it must be about volleyball. He’s terrifyingly quick on his feet and his timing gets better and better as he goes. Futakuchi doesn’t have the same raw focus, but in between mouthing off, he proves himself more than capable. Now Moniwa just has to convince Kamasaki not to kill him.

The others aren't half bad either—during the break, he and the manager share a glance as she shakes down the ice in the cooler. She flicks him with cold water and plants her hands on her hips, surveying the new players.

“Interesting crowd,” she says. “That big kid’s really something.”

“You think they’re what we need?” he asks. She’s quiet for a moment.

“Guess they have to be,” she says. “They didn’t wilt when Coach gave ‘em the speech. That’s something.”

Moniwa twists his towel in both hands. He remembers the speech. He’s not sure how to feel about that either. The speech is about the Iron Wall—the idea of it. It skirts carefully around the number of years in which Datekou has fought to claim that name and fallen short, whether on the scoreboard or in the minds of its players.

“Guess they have to be,” he echoes. “I mean—I want to be there to see it, even if it takes another year.”

“Build it,” she corrects him. “You’re going to be there to build it.”

The regular setter, a third-year, starts missing practices here and there. His play doesn’t deteriorate much, but his expression clouds over day by day. He hunches over his phone in the locker room, quiet, his whole posture foretelling storm. At the end of summer he quits the team to take care of his younger brother. He never says what’s wrong exactly. It’s just one of those things that happens.

_It happens_, Moniwa tries to tell himself as he walks onto the court for the first time with the starting lineup. _It happens and you rise to the occasion, right?_ Aone is a regular too, and Futakuchi gets switched in when they need to add more height to the block. The other first-years wait, bide their time and muffle their complaints. They watch, and Moniwa feels them watching.

Maybe that’s what starts to change him. The sudden knowledge that they want what he has and need what he can give makes his heart trip. Their eyes are on him, he gets his hands under the ball, now he has to watch _everything_. It’s exhausting. It makes failure look a lot worse than it did before, and success seem wilder, sweeter.

* * *

“Thank god you turned out to be the reliable one,” Sasaya says offhandedly as they’re turning out for practice one fall afternoon. Moniwa, second-year regular setter, catches his wry look and realizes he’s been doing it again: hassling the lagging first-years into line and generally acting like he’d be flapping his apron at them if he had one.

“What,” he says, “is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, it’s not like Kamasaki’s going to be the next captain,” Sasaya says.

“Like you’d be so bad at it,” he shoots back, trying not to think about what Sasaya is suggesting.

“I would.” Sasaya swings both arms up over his head and yawns as they head into the gym. “I don’t care enough. I’d be shit at, y’know. Instilling order.”

“You care,” Moniwa says, latching onto that as the one thing he’s sure of. “I’ve seen you. Don’t say that.” He’s been watching too.

“Yeah, but. Like I said,” Sasaya shrugs, looking equal parts embarrassed and pleased. “Better you than me.”

* * *

Four months later, Moniwa Kaname, third-year captain and starting setter for Datekou, sits up in bed and realizes that the future is about to hit him in the face. His last Inter-High starts in less than a week. He still has to sign up for a meeting with the admissions counselor, and renew those career planning books he got from the library, and call his uncle back to find out if his company is still offering internships. He pulls his pillow onto his lap and sits there until his alarm goes off, bringing the cool gray morning to life.

Last year he didn’t have the kind of hopes that he has now. He’s pretty sure that everyone on last year’s team could see: they were contenders, sure, but there would come a time when the road cut off. This year he can’t see where it ends. They could go anywhere, maybe—keep pushing time out ahead of them like asphalt on a new road, forward and forward, prolonging the inevitable. That kind of thinking scares him a little, though. He really should start going to bed earlier.

At some point, he realizes, he started thinking of his team as the _Iron Wall_.

During the game with Karasuno that sense of possibility bubbles in his veins. It wants out, and he alternately curses himself and is thankful for always having been too cautious. At the moment the ball tips over the net and he realizes they’re going to lose, the feeling crystallizes—all cut edges and sharp reflections.

Because, here’s the thing. He’s kept his place by being cautious, but Aone is not cautious. Futakuchi is not cautious. Kamasaki and Sasaya, for some damned inexplicable reason, have in this last year become willing to throw caution to the winds when he readies his set—he’s watched. He knows they’ve been jumping higher for his toss. All of them have been reaching for the place where what they’ve built meets the sky.

Now, Futakuchi and Sasaya hit the ground and the ball comes home just beyond their reach. The whistle blows.

The part of him that’s still noticing everything notes that Sakunami’s already started to cry. He thinks, _I should have risen to meet them_. He’s never been very good with tension anyway, because he has the skill of hanging tough when he’s been hollowed out by strain and effort but that’s no way to win. It’s only a way to keep from losing it.

“Gather up,” he says, raising his voice. He claps his hands for attention and lets the part of him that is iron walk him towards the net, so that his teammates will have someone to follow. Coming off the court is a bit of a blur. There are lights on the sidelines, big cameras. His eyes sting, and he blinks hard.

“Spring tournament!” Aone says to him, and when his head stops spinning he finds that it’s on straight again. Aone and Futakuchi are watching him expectantly. He’d thought he was too exhausted to feel nervous, but it bubbles right back up again, mingling with irritation and affection, telling him that he’s back like he never left.

He explains to them why it can’t happen. He feels Kamasaki and Sasaya come up behind him and the words rise easily now, as his breath comes back to him.

“Thanks to you guys,” he says, “we were able to be part of a team that could call itself the Iron Wall. Now it’s your turn to take it the rest of the way.”

Kamasaki presses a surreptitious hand to his back, and Sasaya shoves an elbow beneath his arm. Slowly he relaxes. He’s going to be able to cry soon and that, he thinks, will make this a little easier. The looks on Aone and Futakuchi’s faces are equal parts mortifying and funny—there’s still so much _want_ in them, so much they can use to reach higher.

“Nice speech, captain,” Kamasaki grunts, smacking him between the shoulder blades as they head up to make their bow to the stands. “And you’re welcome for shutting Futakuchi up, by the way.” Sasaya hums, amused—he talks even less when he’s tired.

They shout their thanks to the cheering section, the parents, the alumni and the hangers-on. Moniwa waits until he, Kamasaki, and Sasaya are alone in the locker room to let his hoarse voice crumble the rest of the way. Sasaya is folded up on the bench and Kamasaki is, no surprise, taking his feelings out on a locker. Moniwa wipes his face on his sleeve for probably the fifth time.

“The new Iron Wall,” he says, and those words are more of a relief than he ever could have imagined. He told Aone and Futakuchi to take it further, so of course they will. “The new Iron Wall will definitely hold strong.” Sasaya turns his head just enough to crack a grin that says, very clearly, _are you listening to yourself? _Kamasaki snorts, and then ruins it by sniffling loudly.

It’s quieter now than it has been for a long time. Moniwa leans back against the lockers, and lets himself think something new. It’s a thought that came to him when he was trying to defuse Aone and Futakuchi back there, and it starts like this: all this time, those two have been building towards the top, and they wanted him to stay. So he might have had it wrong—maybe it wasn’t about rising to meet them, about trying to do something big and worthy.

Maybe that’s not what he was here for.

“Just wait, a month from now and you’ll be laughing your ass off at Futakuchi every time you walk by the gym,” Kamasaki says thickly.

“What?”

“I mean, you just—you know, captaining’s a tough job,” Kamasaki waves his hands expansively. “You had it all on your shoulders.”

Moniwa lets a long breath go, slow and shaky. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s—yeah. I like the sound of that. I think maybe you’re right.”

**Author's Note:**

> "this isn't bad," I thought. "but it needs a title and I already used 'foundations' on another datekou fic so I'll stick it in the drafts folder until I come up with something."
> 
> and then I forgot about it for four years. oops?


End file.
